Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

ascii.textfiles.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 227 posts

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#211

Post by AlbertCory »

accrual wrote: post #28
AlbertCory wrote: post #3

I was in Google Patent Litigation, and we actively collected old stuff, for possible use as prior art. I even went to Beryl Nelson's house before she died to collect her old Bell System Technical Journals. A lot of old stuff has no value to anyone. That can be hard to accept, but it's true. Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over.

> Even old wood furniture -- no one wants it. Old PC or Byte Magazines? Forget it; they're all over. I think the former is pretty true, but old PC magazines are still important to keep around. For one, they can be digitized to take up virtually no physical space (unlike furniture). Secondly, once digitized and OCR'd to make searchable, they're a valuable resource for finding out when certain products or technologies…

When I said "PC" that was a noun, not an adjective. There was a "PC magazine" by that name.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#212

Post by theodric »

telmnstr wrote: post #195
theodric wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may have the only omnibus of PET Benelux Exchange magazines out there, which seem to be entirely unavailable online. There are exceptions.

Scan and share!

Yeah, I had grand plans. I even did one issue, and OCR'd it as well, but then COVID happened and work got busy and now you can fast-forward four years when I've moved countries again, hopefully for the last time. I know where they are, which is good. Need to disassemble the book-edge scanner and clean the underside of the glass off because it's all fogged. I also need to stand up a VM that can talk to the crappy OpticBook drivers. And I'm behind on my start-of-season farm work, which keeps expanding fractally the deeper I go. That dependency stack is what's in my way at the moment.

Eventually, I swear!

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#213

Post by [deleted] »

TylerE wrote: post #99
Semaphor wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? I bought a bed last year. It’s solid wood, only the bottom of the under-bed-drawers being some kind of glued material. And it wasn’t even some super high-end thing, including the drawers, I paid just below 1000 € for it. When searching for a bed to buy (as I wanted solid wood), I even found many stores specializing in solid wood furniture.

Now try finding a solid wood table that doesn't cost $3,000+.

[deleted]

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#214

Post by justin66 »

amichlin wrote: post #209
glimshe wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you run a vintage computing festival, and accept historical material from one of the most prominent conservationists of computer artifacts alive, there is absolutely no excuse for throwing "old magazines" away. These guys were not goodwill accepting random trinkets from random people. Jason Scott is basically saying "I discovered they are hacks, and I will not support hacks"

Except nothing was thrown away.

Well, that's just like problem solved right there.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#215

Post by justin66 »

justin66 wrote: post #105
throwaway5959 wrote: post #80

I attended the SoCal Vintage Computer festival, went to a talk and when they asked for questions, seeing no one else asking questions, I asked if anyone wrote malware for these systems now that they’re internet connected. The inventor of the device (Thomas Cherryhomes) immediately belittled the question and asked why anyone would want to do that (the irony seemed to escape him, given that he built a network interface…

Joe Decuir is the man - there are a number of really good presentations of his on youtube. And the parent is talking about Fujinet, which is all the rage: https://fujinet.online/ It's too bad Cherryhomes shot down an interesting question.

I just watched the video from that presentation and it didn't sound like anything so egregious that it would make you want to never attend a similar event was said (we couldn't hear your actual question very well). I get that there's a little more to your decision than that, but still.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#216

Post by gn4d »

xoa wrote: post #177
amichlin wrote: post #160

Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened on…

> Again, former VCFederation (Mid Atlantic and National) volunteer here. I was only a volunteer when this donation came in and was part of the team that made sure this donation got a good home later on. No one involved at either end of this is still actively involved with VCF, so the OP is taking an organization task to because of a lack of institutional knowledge. I offered to privately explain what really happened…

tbh, the abhorrent behavior of VCF employees (and former employees), as well as some of the commenters on Mr. Scott's page, has proved his point in spades that VCF East is a disgusting organization.

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#217

Post by [deleted] »

justin66 wrote: post #215
justin66 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe Decuir is the man - there are a number of really good presentations of his on youtube. And the parent is talking about Fujinet, which is all the rage: https://fujinet.online/ It's too bad Cherryhomes shot down an interesting question.

I just watched the video from that presentation and it didn't sound like anything so egregious that it would make you want to never attend a similar event was said (we couldn't hear your actual question very well). I get that there's a little more to your decision than that, but still.

[deleted]

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#218

Post by [deleted] »

justin66 wrote: post #215
justin66 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joe Decuir is the man - there are a number of really good presentations of his on youtube. And the parent is talking about Fujinet, which is all the rage: https://fujinet.online/ It's too bad Cherryhomes shot down an interesting question.

I just watched the video from that presentation and it didn't sound like anything so egregious that it would make you want to never attend a similar event was said (we couldn't hear your actual question very well). I get that there's a little more to your decision than that, but still.

[deleted]

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#219

Post by Sakos »

lmpdev wrote: post #203
weregiraffe wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will happen to your hoard after you are gone?

Hopefully copyright on most of it lapses so I can freely upload to Archive.org or similar

Have you thought about putting it on a torrent or sharing it with r/datahoarder ?

Re: I continue to no longer attend vintage computer festivals

#220

Post by tschak »

throwaway5959 wrote: post #80

I attended the SoCal Vintage Computer festival, went to a talk and when they asked for questions, seeing no one else asking questions, I asked if anyone wrote malware for these systems now that they’re internet connected. The inventor of the device (Thomas Cherryhomes) immediately belittled the question and asked why anyone would want to do that (the irony seemed to escape him, given that he built a network interface…

As the speaker in question here, I wish to reply.

I am formally apologizing for minimizing the question. It was not my intention to be derogatory.

But to formally address your question:

The same issues that affect any FujiNet device, are the exact same which affect any IoT device. The problem sets are one and the same, and are addressed by a combination of disciplined test driven development (which we are now doing), and auditing (which we need people to help with.), as well as leveraging fixes from the upstream vendor framework (ESP-IDF).

Since this issue is very close to your heart, would you like to help address this issue directly? All of the issues that the FujiNet team addresses are a direct result of champions who drive them forward.

Thank you for your time, Thomas Cherryhomes, Firmware Engineer, The FujiNet Team.

Post reply on HN